Ana Ballesteros
Researcher Ramón y Cajal
Ana Ballesteros Pena is a Ramón y Cajal Research Fellow at the University of A Coruña since September 2025. Previously, she was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow (UNA4CAREER-COFUND) at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) where she led the GEIPP project Gender Equality and Intersectionality in prison policies: a multi-governed analysis (2023-2025), a Research Fellow of the Talent Attraction Program (Programa de Atracción de Talento/Com Madrid) (2022) at the UCM and the PI of the Project Governmigration on immigration detention in Spain and Canada under a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship at the University of A Coruña and the University of Toronto (Canada) (2018-2021). Her main research lines include gender and punishment, prison policies, immigration detention, border control and gender equality policies.
She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Barcelona (2017) with a thesis entitled ‘Contemporary models and practices of female imprisonment in the Spanish State: Equality policies or new strategies for the control of imprisoned women?’ (“Modelos y prácticas contemporáneos de encarcelamiento femenino en el Estado español”). Her PhD research examined female incarceration in the Spanish penitentiary system with specific focus on the analysis of prison policies implemented since the beginning of the 21st Century.
Among her recent publications are: (2025) Ensamblajes del poder penal: los módulos de respeto de mujeres en las prisiones españolas. Política y Sociedad, 62(1), e95320. https://doi.org/10.5209/poso.95320; (2025) Transformaciones en el archipiélago del control migratorio en España: el caso de las Islas Canarias. Scripta Nova, 29 (1), 103-129 https://doi.org/10.1344/sn2025.29.46775; (2024) Gender Equality Policies “Confined”: Adopted Frames in the Prison System in Spain, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 31 (4): 657–680, https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxae018 (with Prof. María Bustelo) and (2024). The obsolescence of detention: Versatility, expendability and plasticity in the field of immigration confinement. Punishment & Society, 26(3), 527- 46 https://doi.org/10.1177/14624745231218472 (with Cristina Fernández Bessa and José A. Brandariz).
She also coedited, with Cristina Fernández Bessa (UDC), the Special Issue The changing landscapes of immigration detention published in 2024 in Punishment & Society, 26(3), 455-464 and the book Gender Equality Behind Bars: A Feminist Comparative Approach to penality policies along with Prof. Amy Mazur (WSU, USA) and Prof. María Bustelo (UCM, Spain) (Springer, 2025).